"Slow Games" Console Wants To Limit Your Moves in a Game to Just One Per Day

When you sit down to play certain real-time games, you're most likely preparing yourself for a fast-paced session that requires some level of dexterity. Even a relatively minimal game like Pong involves good coordination skills.

The experimental game console Slow Games (via Wired) wants to turn that expectation upside-down - sometimes literally - by simplifying a series of classic games into daily, turn-based events.

By limiting player interaction to just one move per day, designer Ishac Bertran hopes to explore the way these games can challenge different skills, like memory or observation, while still retaining their basic design.

The Slow Games console comes in the form of a small cube, with three variations based on classic games: Mario, Tetris, and Pong. Each game has its own input type.

For the Mario cube, there's a button you can press down to jump. The longer you hold, the farther you'll go.

The Tetris cube acts as the controller itself, allowing you to physically rotate the console to switch up the orientation of falling blocks.

The Pong cube comes with a toggle switch for changing the direction the ball bounces.

Staying faithful to its name, the Slow Games console won't display your move until the next day, which its designer hopes will put a new perspective on familiar experiences.

"I'm using Slow Games as a platform to experiment with low pace, long lasting gameplays, and explore game mechanics that keep players engaged throughout weeks of play with simple rule variations," says Bertran.

Slow Games - which Bertran refers to as "ambient video game consoles" - is just one piece of a larger research project, revolving around the way modern technology tends to promote the expectation of immediacy in our daily lives.